Swain v. Spinney’s Empirical Analysis
117 F.3d 1 · 1997
Citation profile
50 federal appellate · 70 district · 21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 177 later decisions — most recently September 2023 · most notably Curley v. Klem (2002), Suboh v. District Attorney's Office (2002)
50 federal appellate · 70 district · 21 state decisions — followed in 10 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Terry v. Ohio · Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Anderson v. Creighton · Bell v. Wolfish · City of Canton v. Harris
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 177 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[v]isual body cavity searches are invasive and degrading, occasioning a serious invasion of privacy and working a significant harm to a person's bodily integrity. . . . They 'require an arrestee not only to strip naked in front of a stranger, but also to expose the most private areas of her body to others. This is often . . . done while the person arrested is required to assume degrading and humiliating positions.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“consider the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in which it is conducted.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]his prong of the inquiry, while requiring a legal determination, is highly fact specific.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.